Just Like Old Times
by Bellatlas
Summary: "Aren't you supposed to be offering ME wisdom and guidance, and not the other way around, now that you're old and wise and dead?" Anakin visits Ahsoka after his death while she searches for Ezra. The two have a heart to heart as Anakin grapples with coming to terms with what he's done.


**Takes place after the end of Star Wars Rebels, after the death of Anakin and just after Ahsoka and Sabine have embarked on their journey to recover Ezra. **

Ahsoka thought she was having another one of her nightmares at first, though she supposed few would consider them to be nightmares, the dreams of her past while living in the Jedi temple. Back when she was just a padawan, before the bombing, before Barriss's words hit home and before Windu shrugged off the shortcomings of the council that had nearly cost her _everything._

Back when she had been _happy_, in spite of the war, hell, maybe _because _of the war, and so _so _sure of herself and where she was going.

They were good dreams, she supposed, and maybe she should be more grateful for those trips back to her childhood. But it was too painful waking from them for her to ever truly appreciate them, to have the past twenty-odd years come rushing back to her all at once. To realize time and time again that the future she once wanted, once _had,_ would never be. It was far worse than a nightmare if you asked her.

It hadn't been a bad life that she'd lead. It wasn't that she regretted her choice to leave the order, even if doing so wouldn't have saved her life. Not by any means. She'd kept busy. So, _painfully_ busy aiding in the resistance and could never regret realizing the flaws of the Jedi and choosing not to serve them. She did what was right. It wasn't just a mistake that she needed to make. That she had always been sure of, even when she was sure of nothing else.

But, that was still the only life she had ever been truly happy in. She maintained the right to grieve for it, especially on nights like these, when the dreams left the memories of Anakin so fresh in her memory that she swore that his presence in the force was almost tangible. She pulled the covers over her head and begged for sleep to take her back like she had so many times before.

She nearly jumped out of her own skin at the chuckle. "Open your eyes, Snips."

Ahsoka lept out of the bed, lightsabers flying from across the room into her palms, and her limbs moved even faster than her mind. There wasn't supposed to be anyone else on this ship. Just her and Sabine.

"White," Anakin nodded downwards to her sabers, crossed almost in an X against his throat, so close that it would burn if he had still been alive. "I like it… It suits you."

Ahsoka breathed. "It's really you."

"It is."

She snapped the lightsabers closed in an instant, leaving the room illuminated in blue only by the ghost of her former master.

"Master, I- Wh- What are you doing here?"

Anakin crossed his arms. "Gee, nice to see you, too, Snips."

"No, that's not what I meant." Anakin frowned at the lack of humor. Lack of her signature snippiness_. _So much had changed.

She covered her mouth with her hands, restraining herself from rushing forward and embracing him only because she knew there was nothing there to embrace. Instead, she merely reached one palm out towards him, fingers outstretched, while tears spilled down across her cheeks.

"Easy, Ahsoka. It's okay."

In an instant, he took away all of the composure she had crafted so carefully in the past twenty years as Fulcrum. It crumpled around her and she felt like a fourteen year old padawan once again, felt as though her knees might just give out beneath her.

Anakin reached out to steady her, forgetting that he couldn't and his hand went right through her (hey, the ghost thing was still pretty new).

"You're really here," she whispered again.

"And you're still _alive." _Anakin couldn't help the pure relief from washing through his voice. "I'm so _kriffing _glad that you left the order before… before all of _that_."

Ahsoka steadied herself and looked him up and down incredulously.

"What can I say? The force works in mysterious ways." The glint in her eyes was neither quite accusatory nor thankful.

Anakin chuckled. He would never forgive Windu for causing her to leave, but he supposed Windu had been right in the end.

"That's why I'm here, actually. I- I messed up and I- well-" He pursed his lips, fidgeting in a strange way Ahsoka had never seen before.

"Take your time," she said. It wasn't often Anakin admitted that he was wrong. It was new and raw and unpracticed, even for a force ghost.

"Even if weren't for what… _happened… _you made a difficult decision, and I'm proud of you for that, and… I never got to tell you that. I should have told you that… I should have respected your decision, and I was wrong. I'm sorry. For that and _so _much more."

"Thank you, Master."

Anakin only shook his head. "Don't… _don't _call me Master. I don't deserve that title. Not anymore. We both know that."

"Thank you, _Skyguy,"_ she corrected, a hint of the old mirth creeping back into her voice.

Anakin closed his eyes and smiled. "I've missed this."

"I have, too. More than you know." After another moment, she pressed forward. "Do the others not call you master anymore?"

He sighed and sat down on the edge of her bed. "They're not mad at me, if that's what you mean. At least not the ones who decided to, or _could_ stay like this," he gestured to glowing blue aura of himself. "They mostly just call me Anakin. Only the younglings call-" he stopped short and looked away from her, the lump in his throat hard to talk past, and stayed like that, breathing slowly. _In, and out. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Just like Obi-Wan said _

_The younglings. _Stumbling away from him as their hero slaughtered them one by one. The thought made him sick, if force ghosts could even get sick, almost as sick as their immediate and naive acceptance of him when he'd eventually joined them in death. As if he hadn't robbed them of life so young in a place they were supposed to be safest. "They're not mad at me, either," he whispered, looking down at his palms.

"Good." Ahsoka reached out to put a hand on her old master's shoulder, she, too, forgetting that he wasn't really there- not physically at least. Anakin gave her a small smile of appreciation nonetheless. "They shouldn't be angry. That wasn't you who did that to them."

"It was, Ahsoka."

She shook her head. "Do you remember what he told me on Malachor?"

"You mean what _I _told you on Malachor?"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "Sure."

"I remember."

"Say it."

Anakin shot her a sour look.

"I'm serious. Say it."

He sighed, not losing the half-sneer he was giving her. "That Anakin Skywalker was weak. And that he- _I _killed him."

"And do you remember what I said?"

"That you would avenge me."

Ahsoka nodded. "You are not him. Even then, I never thought that you were. Nobody did. Not even Vader. Everyone else has forgiven you. I have spent my _entire life_ cleaning up the aftermath of your mess-"

"_Thanks," _Anakin said dryly.

"_And if I can move past that," _she continued, ignoring Anakin's interruption "if I can see that he is not you, then you can realize that, too. I _know _you, Master. And I knew Vader. And the two of you could not be more different. You've brought balance to the force, Anakin. The Galaxy is in peace once again. Rejoice in that."

"Ahsoka." He shook his head. "Nothing can excuse everything that I've inflicted, balance to the force or not."

She sat down next to him and stared at the wall that Anakin was suddenly finding so intriguing. "Forgiveness isn't excusing. Not really. Besides, what's your other option? Mope around the galaxy in self-pity and despair for all eternity?"

Anakin shrugged. "Sounds about right," and Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"Aren't _you _supposed to be helping _me _and guiding _me, _Master? Now that you're old and wise and dead?"

Anakin smirked slyly at her. "I'm not that, old, Snips. In fact, I think you're looking a good couple of decades older than me right now."

"Not fair! _You_ got to go back to being in your twenties when you joined the force!"

Anakin laughed, a low hearty chuckle that Ahsoka never thought she'd hear again. "You're right, though. Obi Wan told me to make it brief, and I've said what I came to say."

"Obi Wan? Obi Wan is still around?"

Anakan flinched visibly and squeezed his eyes shut. "No more than I am. Not anymore..."

"Oh. _Oh. _I'm so-"

"Do _not _apologize to me."

Ahsoka nodded and moved on. She knew better than to pour salt in that wound. Not yet. "What about… did you know a Kanan? A Caleb Dume? He- "

"Decided to become one with the force," Anakin finished. The one padawan he hadn't killed. Still killed in the war he'd caused. "I'm sorry."

Ahsoka looked down at her hands and nodded. For just a brief second, the thought of being able to talk to Kanan's ghost, to give a message to Hera for him, or maybe even have him meet his newborn son if Jacen wound up being force-sensitive, danced in her mind. What a gift that would have been. Even if she'd only entertained the idea for a brief moment, to have that hope ripped away was every bit as bitter as waking up from her dreams again and again.

"You would have liked him," she finished lamely. "He didn't like following the Jedi's rules either."

Anakin chuckled again. "Speaking from experience, I can't say that I'd particularly recommend going against their rules, pesky as they may be."

Aksoka looked over him curiously, almost sizing him up in silence, and Anakin raised an eyebrow. "No. No, you had to hide your attachments and had nobody to turn to." They both decided not to mention that Anakin could very well have turned to her or Obi Wan.

"He didn't. He had so _so _many attachments, Anakin… and they kept him… I don't know if it's fair to say completely resolute to the light, but on the good side. Kept his padawan on the good side, even when he began straying towards the dark. Always. There was never any doubt about that. I've found, more and more, that the practice of having nothing to lose, of being _required _to have nothing to lose, isn't usually a good thing. It just makes you cold and desperate."

"Obi-Wan wasn't cold and desperate."

Ahsoka looked over at him and smiled, irises almost invisible behind the reflection of the force ghost. "Obi-Wan wasn't free from attachments, though, was he?" She waited for Anakin to say something, but he only stared and waited for her to continue.

"The force needs to be balanced, Anakin. We've always known that. There was no balance in how the Jedi taught. It was unstable… _unsustainable_… You, Barriss, Ventress, and _so many_ others should have told us that. And yet, the more they would try to force the order's extreme on the younglings, the closer to the other extreme they got."

"This-" she turned her palms upwards and extended her lightsabers to Anakin. They flickered to life- not green, not red, but _white,_ "This is how it needs to be. _This _is how this whole thing could have prevented. Attachment is so necessary, Anakin. Healthy attachment. Open attachment. _Love. _Loving enough to let go. This is how the Jedi should have been teaching. How Kanan taught. How you never even would have needed avenging."

When she looked back to Anakin this time, she could swear that she saw a film of tears in his eyes as he looked at her, but they were blinked away before she could be sure. "You're so wise, Ahsoka. So much wiser than I was. Am. You couldn't have turned out to be a better-"

He stopped himself before saying Jedi, because Ahsoka was most definitely no Jedi.

"Person," Ahsoka finished for him. "I couldn't have turned out to be a better _person." _

Anakin nodded. "You're a better _person_ than I could ever have hoped to be. I'm so proud of you, Snips."

"And I you."

"You know," he said, finally standing up from the edge of her bed, "the Jedi order is being rebuilt right now. My children will need help. They'll need a master. The best of the best. You could fix it. Make it everything that it could have been all those years ago and more."

Ahsoka smirked at him "Almost thirty years, and you're still trying to get me back, Skyguy." She swatted at his head and he ducked even though he had no physical form to hit.

"Maybe," she said more seriously. "Maybe one day. Right now, though? Right now I need to find my friend. I have a mission, Anakin, and I'm not abandoning it. Not even for the new order." Ezra had saved her from Vader himself and sacrificed himself to hyperspace without a second thought, with only the request that she come find him. And come find him she would.

"You have all of hyperspace to search, Ahsoka. I... don't know if there will be a one day."

"You know…" She smirked. "I could use all the help I could get finding him. It could be like old times. The two of us on missions. Old friends."

"I'm not really supposed to stay around very long like this," Anakin said, but even as he spoke, there was a certain gleam in his blue eyes.

"I know. But, since when have either of us been a stickler for the rules?"

She could see the gears turning, the way his brows furrowed when his mind and his heart were at war, the same expression that she'd seen a million times before.

"Besides, if it's redemption you're after…" she opened the door from her quarters and led them both to the cockpit of their ship. "Maybe you could at least give this a shot before resigning yourself to an eternity of self-loathing while moping around the galaxy."

Anakin stared out into hyperspace, hands itching for the controls that he couldn't actually touch. How long had it been since he'd seen space with his own eyes and not through a mask? How long had it been since he'd flown through space and had _fun? _How long had it been since he'd been on a mission with his beloved padawan? It felt like an eternity.

He glanced at Ahsoka out of the corner of his eye. "Don't tell Obi Wan."

She winked at him and motioned that her lips were sealed before sitting down at the controls.

Just like old times.

**I'm having a bit of a Star Wars/ Star Wars Rebels and Clone Wars Rennaisance and needed to write something. Enjoy! Please review!**


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